The present application relates to fabricating machined parts, and more particularly, to fabricating machined parts using sacrificial supports.
Machined parts are employed, for example, in airplane manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, and a wide variety of other industries. When machining parts, a cutting tool is often used to remove material from a rough part or block of stock material. The cutting tool may cause the part to vibrate during the cutting process. This vibration can reduce the accuracy of the cut, leave vibration marks on the part due to variations in cut depth, and even cause the part to break or otherwise be damaged.
Cutting tool vibration has been controlled using special cutting tool geometries and/or machining techniques designed to reduce vibration. For example, in certain machining techniques, small amounts of material may be removed at a slow rate using multiple cuts in order to avoid vibration. In one such technique, referred to herein as water-line machining, a part comprising, for example, a thin wall having two major side surfaces, may be machined by successively removing small portions of a rough part, beginning at the top of the rough part and working down. A first cut removes a strip of material to a desired depth from the top of one side of the rough part, and then a second cut removes a strip of material to the same depth from the top of the opposing side of the rough part. Successive cuts are made, first removing material from one side and then the other, down the rough part until the entire part is machined to form the thin wall.
However, as parts become thinner, they tend to become less rigid. This may result in a decrease in both the amount of material that can be removed with each cut, and the rate at which each cut can be made, in order to maintain vibrations of the part to an acceptable level during the machining process. Consequently, machining processes for thin parts may be time consuming and costly, and may still cause unacceptable vibrations for very thin parts.